January 9, 2007

tapage nocturne

This is the sound my upstairs neighbours’ clogs make as they grate against the hardwood floor like giant fingernails on a blackboard, at a volume loud enough to actually wake me from a deep, dreamless slumber. At least I imagine their feet clad in clogs. What else could possibly make that unforgivable noise? Although why anyone would slip on a pair of clogs at 2am, I am at an utter loss to understand. Ditto how anyone can stomp around for half an hour at 2am and then begin again, bright eyed and bushy tailed, at 6.30am. I’m beginning to suspect that there may be more than one culprit. Two clog wearers in the same household working different shifts. Statistically unlikely, I know, but I can furnish no other convincing explanation.

Naturally I was not treated to my first clog concerto until the ink was drying on the deeds to the apartment.

“Whhhhhiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrr. Grrrrrrrrr. Ding!” growls the microwave five centimetres away from my pillow at 7 am every morning, part of my elderly neighbour’s morning ritual, no doubt warming milk for a steaming bowl of café crème or a chocolat chaud. I try to look on the bright side. At least I don’t have to shell out for an alarm clock, as it would be superfluous, to say the least.

Tadpole’s side of the apartment shares a wall with the kitchen/dining room belonging to the old lady who often smells of urine and affectionately calls me “ma fille” in her sandpaper voice. She also appears to be hard of hearing, as we are regularly treated to bursts of cheerful North African music played at full blast on the radio. Thankfully she is reasonably quiet in the evenings.

But by far the worst noise pollution I have experienced so far were the shenanigans I overheard on Christmas day, when I fell gratefully into the warm embrace of my duck-down duvet after mainlining champagne and foie gras from noon until midnight. The culprits were, once again, the upstairs neighbours. This time the clogs were off, as, I imagine, were most of their garments. And evidently they had discovered a new pastime: sex. With what I can only describe as noisy abandon and great gusto Mr Clogs serviced his good lady wife from midnight until a little after 4 am.

Since I’ve been living here since late July, and this was both the first and the only time I’ve overheard so much as a moan of pleasure, I can only conclude that this was an annual lovemaking session and will consequently not be repeated before the evening of 25 December 2007. Call me an optimist, but I live in hope (but with emergency waxy earplugs at the ready).

I have never met my upstairs neighbours, but I am told they own their apartment. But in today’s post I received the convocation to the (also) annual assemblée générale des copropriétaires for my building which will take place next week. Nothing could keep me away. I need to know what a woman who brays like a donkey during coitus and is capable of upwards of ten orgasms in one single night looks like.

Whether I will feel able to look my neighbours in the eye, or be sufficiently bold to humbly request that they might consider wearing less offensive nocturnal footwear in the future, is another matter entirely. I can imagine the conversation already.

We had an apartment in the 20th, and a few months in the neighbour from across the way came by. He explained that he was a postman, and thus had to wake very early, and could we please not wash the dishes so late at night. We speculated for some time as to whether he had mistaken noise from somewhere else for us (as we never washed dishes late at night), or whether ‘washing the dishes’ had been a euphemism for loud sex (never, of course, four hours worth though…).

Sorry to be doom and gloom laden but wait until you want to sell and have to schedule viewings in between noisy neighbour times. I’m now an expert at those. Although, I guess, not many people may want to view a possible new home on Christmas/Boxing Day which could help you enormously. Mid Saturday mornings were a definite no go for any potential viewersfor my place. I had to let the estate agents think that I didn’t do weekend mornings at all….

On an entirely different subject, seeing as Tadpole spent some holiday time in the UK, I’m intrigued (OK, maybe just nosey) as to whether she initially speaks French in England or, also, the other way around?
And how about you?

actually, we recently discovered that the floor below us is part of a middle school. where classes with middle schoolers are held. every day. no joke. luckily it’s only during the day that chairs scraping and falling, doors slamming, feet stomping and middle schoolers yelling waft up through the once-charming parquet.

wasn’t it Sting who claimed to have maintained a lovemaking session for 7 hours? poor Trudy.

V. funny, reminds me of the time when I was living in Japan in a tiny apartment block where the walls were really rather paper thin – I got to share in the joys of my neighbours’ nocturnal activities on a regular basis! So did my parents when they were over visiting, they couldn’t believe their ears…Earplugs worked a treat as did banging on the wall and yelling as the need for sleep was greater than my british reserve and ‘politeness’ by that point! Happy New Year. Hope 2007 brings all that you wish for.

Perhaps when you see your neighbour you should enquire whether or not they had a good Christmas?

A friend of mine used to be kept awake by the noises of the girl above him having lots of sex and screaming rather loudly when she climaxed.(that’s the room above him btw). He was fairly ok with it until he discovered that the person above him was in fact a guy, and that the guys girlfriend wasn’t the one who liked to scream ;)

Petite, I had the same incident on New Year’s Eve and the day immediately following. My downstairs neighbor and her mate, a young man I met only hours prior, nearly brought down our adjoined wall with their…affairs – waking me up first thing on New Year’s morning. The next day, the same multiplied by ten. This time, complete with vocal accompaniment.

Although, me being the curious little fox that I am, I giggled in amusement and embarrassment and plastered my ear to the floor. That is, until my legs and torso, still propped on the bed, began to slide off and I found myself tumbling to the floor in a tangle of sheets, pillow, and blanket.

You’d think the sound of my tiny self tumbling to the floor would’ve quieted their “vocal harmonies”, but no. It only encouraged them. Sigh.

I don’t like these Western World Walls, made of wood and transporting sound everywhere and of everywhere. I remember getting mad during my first days of stay here. After 15 or so days, I actually got a rod from somewhere, balanced myself on my bathtub and tapped the roof above. Am embarrassed to admit that but a bad case of jetlag, and the full orchestra accompanying me during the precious lil time I got in my room are my justifications.

perhaps a thoughtful gift of a pair of crocs? at least that would deal with the stampy feet. with any luck, they’ll also reduce your neighbour’s sex-appeal at the same time. (this from an unrepetant croc wearer – they’re just soooo comfortable!)

My upstairs neighbor has heavy shoes as well which he drops from a great height at 2 AM when he comes home from work. I wonder if he is a waiter? His daughter is a horrible little brat who screams when she is put in bed and when she wakes up in the middle of the night-which often occurs. During the day she practices her routine of pretending to be a pony and thunders back and forth across the floor. I can hear the people next door pee in their toilet too if I am in my bathroom. I guess apartment inhabitants know alot more about our neighbors than we want to know.

I’ve met our upstairs neighbours regularly when I’ve stormed up there in a rage to complain about the noise and found they’re willing to discuss the problem in a civilised manner.
The upstairs neighbours are a couple of young men who live, work and holiday together. Their noisy guests seemed to be almost exclusively young males.
We’d got the amused impression that they were gay until the other night when all was calm there was the distinct sound from above of a young woman arriving noisily at climax, accompanied by a rythmic banging on the floor and further female moans a few minutes later.
I don’t think it was Meg Ryan.
They do have a vi

If you discover any method of quieting your stompyy neighbors, please let us all know. We are actually in the process of selling our apartment, largely due to the fact that I cannot stand to spend one more night lying in bed listening to our downstairs neighbor rearrange her cupboards and clean the house at 1 am, while wearing her high heels (Tap tap tap tap tap, back and forth for HOURS). They bought their apartment about a year ago and constant banging on the floor has only had a mild effect on the noise levels so I decided it would be easier to move than to spend the next 10 years shouting through the floor at them. Our place has been on the market for a month. Sometimes you have to know when to throw in the towel…

When I was living in Berkeley, California, my next door neighbor enjoyed having sex at the crack of dawn on weekend mornings. Loudly. And a couple hours later she would follow this up by vacuuming, accompanied to very loud, very bad music (often Celine Dion). A very odd ritual indeed.

In France though we don’t tend to have these problems. However, we do hear our upstairs neighbor peeing on a regular basis.

Earplugs are a girl’s best friend. From years of apartment living I bring them everywhere with me. They come in handy in hotel rooms, too, where people are even less discrete with their nighttime rituals.

Noisy neighbours, tell me about them. I have a permanently coughing bed-ridden man right “behind my bed” who has the TV on all the night and stomping, party-prone students on the floor above me. No sex-maniancs alas, unlike a friend from my book club who had told us about the orgies of her upstairs neighbours until we finally had the privilege of hearing them at it one Sunday morning as we were all having brunch in her living room. We found it hilarious, but the hostess did not as I suppose the novelty wears off when you have been woken up in the middle of the night by someone else’s grunts and screams one time too many.

Hi Petite, funny post! My tip against the noise: go to Leroy Merlin and buy some construction ear protectors casque by 3M. I”ve bought one for Bangalore and sometimes even sleep in it! Works reaaly well combined with ear plugs.

I used to have problems with a crazy old neighbour which hobbies where to watch old american movies from the 60s in French version (horrible voices, awful music) between 1:30 and 4 am, during hot (“canicule” time) summer nights. Of course, it was so hot that she had all her windows open and so were mine, and we had common windows on the “cour intérieure”.
I spent some hard nights, tried to talk to here in person (she was really crazy and paranoid, so she thought I was paid by her daughter in law to kill her!), but this didn’t work, so I had to call the Police and eventually, a couple of weeks later, she left (did her daughter in law manage to get her killed?), good riddance.
My upstairs neighbour is also a little bit crazy, but at least she’s not noisy at all (except for her washing machine from after midnight sometimes), but she used to ask me if I was not bothered by here noise. Was it an implicit way of telling me that I made too much noise and that she doesn’t appreciate my music at 2 am?

I got a note from our upstairs neighbour after I wore a new pair of boots in our flat. We have wooden floors, and I was making a right old racket without realising it. She wrote a sweet letter asking me not to and it was fine – I was horribly embarrassed for being so thoughtless though! I always wear slippers indoor now.

“No Sex Please, We’re British.” Now I know this doesn’t apply to you…….;-) (or am I sensing jealousy from you that it wasn’t you experiencing what the neighbor was?) Perhaps a better alternative is to do some wall shaking of your own back at them…..You could look them in the eye and say “Hah! 4 hours and 5 minutes! Beat your record!”

Wow – I related to that post so much. My problem isn’t clogs but two rolling (scraping) desk chairs but ditto I’m too British to kick up a fuss. Ear plugs work in bed but surely you can’t be expected to wear them in all other rooms of your flat too?!
One day I will move to the French countryside and live in a detached house rather than a flat – I don’t know how French people do it.

Your neighbours will be easy to recognise – they’ll be the narcoleptic pirates – always up in the middle of the night clomping around on their wooden legs.

The worst case of “nocturnal noises” I know of is The Kingston Screamer. She’s a girl who lives/lived in Kingston, a studenty suburb of Canberra. Kingston is very quiet. She is not. Her wails echo across the neighbourhood – I heard her from a hotel that Mrs Albion and I were sharing down there. She has also been written up in the Aussie FHM, or Nuts or whatever.

I would love to have that audio from next foor. Four hours cannot repeat itself without, as someone pointed out, sores!!!

Paris and I just met and the noise is affreux! I am on a street that curves 90 degrees and then uphill to meet the “main road”. Every half hour the emergency vehicles, then the mopeds decellerate in my street, then whine their way up another 20 meters to get out of what might as well be a cul de sac.

But after a week, I seem to have tuned them out?

Yet, this is only week one so I am still enjoying the honeymoon of living here.

Rosbif

PS Petite, being a Brit expat (well me too but long story), I have a question for you. When did the emergency services in the UK go from using the two tone sirens on the cars to the American style? I notice Paris still uses two tones albeit it at a different frequency.

hmmm, I have loud neighbours, upstairs and downstairs. I once met the girl downstairs in the hallway and asked her if she had enjoyed herself the previous night. She’s been as quiet as a mouse since. Bet she stuffs a cushion in it!

The other problem with French appartments is that they’re often rented “meublé”, and the furniture is by definition chipboard crap, hence an overdose of squeaking, scraping and banging…

Your neighbours probably do it every night but the gag only comes off on Christmas day! The worst shenanigans I ever experienced was when on holiday in Italy a few years ago and the German couple in the room next door had a session which must have lasted three hours. It was such a hot night and all the balcony doors in the hotel were wide open, the woman had such a voice on her, it carried all round the complex and believe me it was no holds barred, we thought it was never going to stop.

The funniest thing was the next day down at breakfast, people were looking distinctly sheepish and had expressions on their faces as if to say “Well, don’t look at me, I don’t even know what tantric sex is!”

When it’s your mortgage you do tend to prefer not to be disturbed by your neighbours, presumably they don’t have carpets.

Carpets and curtains and furniture deaden sound and if you search the net you will find ways to absorb it without much difficulty. You really should pop upstairs and check out the flooring………..and if you get in the mood for retaliation have a powerful HI-Fi amp with speakers and go out leaving CD recordings of Cesar Franck organ fugues playing…………..the low frequencies will cause the floor and walls to vibrate……….you can then smile if you are asked about your “social intercourse”

I remember in New York when I was a student I rented a small apartment for the summer. The woman next door was always going at it and I could hear the details of her lovemaking. One night I brought someone home (the only time) and the next day while taking my laundry downstairs I bumped into my neighbor. “Do you ever hear anything from my apartment?”, she asked rather sheepishly. In what I now know is a British manner I replied, “No, not at all.”

I heard about your site from my big brother, and I think it is marvellous. I have just started my own blog and am looking for ideas.
Your upstairs neighbours sound amazing. I hope you do sneak upstairs and have a look. Really intrigued by the braying noise. Must try it sometime.
Lorenzo.

Having recently bought a house, in part to avoid obnoxious neighbors who owned the apartment below me, I was somewhat disconcerted when both of my next-door neighbors sold their houses to new people. On one side is the person with bass in their car. Thankfully, it appears to be *only* in the car; their house must lack bass-generating facilities. He likes to blast this at 9:00 in the morning – well after I am gone normally, but if I’m home sick or due to weather, it’s a special treat. Also, on his return in the evenings. It goes on for about 10 minutes, just long enough for my blood to start boiling, and then stops. It is so loud, you could hear it a mile away! I thought I would avoid this by owning a house, but apparently not.

my husband and I woke to an upstairs neighbour running the vaccuum cleaner at 7:30am one Saturday after the neighbour had just moved in. husband, problem solver that he is, left a semi-nasty note on his door. they haven’t woken us with the vaccuum again. as for the loud door slamming and boot stomping every night… that’s what the ear plugs are for!

Hi Petite — very funny! One thought: this being France, are you sure that it was BOTH of your normal neighbors? If this isn’t the usual moaning and screaming, maybe it was an extracurricular event only at Xmas while someone else was away. I think that’s why the French are so often circumspect about these things “neighbor” matters… better not to mention it outright, perhaps?
Best of luck.

i think everyone’s got a story about neighbors and their noisiness and i do, too! one night, i lay in bed reading, when i heard an unearthly scream, directly behind my head, in the apartment next door. i jolted upright and considered possible actions: calling 911, banging on their door to interrupt what sounded like a brutal fight. but as i lay there, the screams continued and i clued into what was really happening on the other side of the wall. i laughed the first time, but quickly grew heartily sick of it. never said anything though…

Our lovely neighbours like to frequently practice their piano playing – needless to say their music isn’t to our taste (certainly not with their poor skills and the high degree of repetition required). It goes without saying that the piano is against the common wall. Annoying enough at the best of times – but when you have to sleep during the day due to working nightshift – it basically happens every “night”.

I think you’ll find Mrs Clogs was away over Christmas and Mr Clogs was servicing someone else’s Mrs. Or rather, you won’t. But it makes the prospect of remarking sweetly to Mrs Clogs about the Christmas present she gave him much more entertaining, don’tcha think?

I like all these people who recommend ear plugs. Very clever. Hey, how come Petite hasn’t thought of tis before, hey?

Except I’m sure they don’t have kids.

You know, dear childless people, being a parent means being responsible. So it means being ready to rush to your child’s bed when they’re awaken by a nightmare. Or when croup strikes at midnight, literally depriving them from air. Or when they fall off their bed. Or when they wet themselves at night. Or…
J’en passe et des meilleures.

Oh Boris! Not that I want to start a “polemique” (hmmm!) but let me tell you that even if I am sometimes wearing earplugs, I am able to hear my little one if he wakes up and calls for me! Mothers (I don’t know about fathers) have a special mega-radar connected with their child(ren) ; )
Bien a vous…et sweet dreams to all.

In my old flat, my boyf and I used to call the chap upstairs ‘Darling’ because he would ring and talk to his ‘darling’ (who was somewhere the other side of the world) at every indecent, ungodly hour possible. I knew the intricacies of their relationship better than my own which fell apart soon after!

I was hammering some nails into a wall one evening around 7.30 pm, not long after moving into my ground floor flat (I live in France). My upstairs neighbour came downstairs to complain, dressed in her pink fluffy dressing gown, pink fluffy slippers and (honestly!) pink fluffy hairband. She said she worked very long hours and needed her sleep.

I apologised profusely and promised not to do it again. I hate my British side too.

I just wanted to thank you as I have followed your advice on reading Left Bank (if I remember right you had a picture of the book on your side bar). I read it in a row. Even if I did not like the way it ended…Anyway, thank you for sharing your readings with us :)

I don’t like the idea of earplugs even if you don’t have children, you could sleep through something very important like a smoke/fire alarm or an emergency phone call. I hate to sound like an old fuddy duddy but my daughter is living in a room on the eighth floor at the moment.

I recently had sex with my downstairs neighbour. I had dropped down to leave in a parcel the postman had left with me for her, and then one drink led to another drink and then one thing led to another. She “who must be obeyed” was out of town of course. Now whenever we meet on the stairway (in the company of the missus), we look at eachother expression of michiefous glee. Hee hee.
Paris is a great town!

Now, I won’t pretend that the one track idea hadn’t occurred to me. But I’m sure she wouldn’t come to Paris without looking me up, so maybe ten-orgasms-per-session girls are more common that I thought…

Sex with your downstairs neighbours and ten-orgasm-per session girls. Fine talk and choice language, I dare say. Nine times out of ten when I post a comment hereabouts, I’m censored (more often than not, for using the c-word or the f-word). I’ll be suprised if this post is even published.
You people make me sick!

I suspect Mr & Mrs Clogs were celebrating the spirit of Christmas by watching their brand new porn DVD in a loop.
Maybe it’s an expression of my own inadequacies, but four hours and ten orgasms seem too good too be true!
Still, now I know what to ask Santa for, next Christmas.

My mum once heard her neighbours make… that noise (not the clog one). She got so tired of it that one night she imitated the noise and the neighbours, hearing this and realising that someone had heard them, got so embarrassed that they stopped right in the middle of a busy night. It was the last time she ever heard them. Not a good idea, in theory, but in the long run…well, always an option.

LOL at #93 – Well, playing aloud a steamy DVD in a loop could do it too. The female neighbour upstairs would be both embarassed and jealous because of the high level of performance lol. Just an opinion :D

I’d rather trust my ears than my wife’s radar that seems totally shut down at night. And yeah, she wears earplugs – good thing I don’t otherwise I would have never forgiven myself for the many times I rushed to the bedroom – while missus was still sleeping.

So much for the mega-radar, let me tell you! Or maybe it’s the fault of her mirrorfoam pillow, I don’t know.

I think you can still access the first series of Clare in the community Radio 4,where there is an hilarious sketch on same subject.(Clare being a very right on social worker who can,t deal with own problems)

Misunderstood your rented office space for an apartment. Must have had a brain blip…… I think that it was the time when i was very busy with my eldest daughter and misread it! Now I have re read and realise!

Re the next door problem, a friend of ours once had a similiar thing and used bookcased as a buffer. Upstairs is more of a problem, unless you want to lower the ceiling and put in soundproofing – which I doubt!!

Could you offer to dedicate your book to them if they on the other hand put soundproofing under their floorboards?? You can get this wadding stuff which is excellent. We have put it in our house to buffer noise. You need a cavity of some sort though.

But on the other hand, problems are great for funny blogs!! So you don’t want to fix everything in life!!

I’ve just read this a few days after the fact and I simply can no longer fathom the experience as it’s been nearly 15 years since I’ve lived in one. But I remember once my wife and I had couple who lived below us who would argue and curse a mean streak. (In fact, I may have learned a few new choice words from this couple.) Well, one day, I ran into one of them on the elevator who asked me “was that you I heard playing guitar upstairs?” I replied that it was me, to which he said, “Well, could you stop. You really suck and it all sounds like noise to me.” It was then that I used one of my newly-learned profanities.

Boris,
A “mirror foam pillow”, what is that and how does it help your wife sleeping that deeply? Might be a good option for Petite Anglaise too!
Anyway, the only solution I found to escape the 3 am neighbours pee/sex/heaviestshoes of the century and other things I disliked about Paris was actually to leave the city…and cross the Channel. CQFD

Though I know they’re not the most fashionable footwear, you might want to consider buying your neighbours a pair or two of Crocs. They’re like lightweight rubber clogs, and are infinitely more comfortable…and quiet!

Do you live in my building??? I haven’t seen a nice lady with a three year old coming and going, but the clogs and a few of the others…I’m sure they live here. And the sound of every footfall echoes from above when I can’t hear my spouse across the room. What acoustics!!

It is quite normal to do it once a year. That’s what it takes for her to recover. I also have noisy clog wearing upstairs neighbours. They keep dropping stuff, but only from 11pm till 4am. Rest of the day is absolutely quiet. We can hear their sex sessions, but at least they never last more than 30 seconds, and twice a month is a maximum. My downstairs neighbour love french rap. He is single, so I don’t have to worry about any kind of bed noises, but he really loves his music. If possible very loud, and at 6am.

You hate your british side? Even with hers, my girlfriend is lousing it and stumping at the walls screaming some “shut up” (en anglais dans le texte) at our 6yrs old screaming uneducated neighbour’s brat.

It reminds me my time in student accomodations. Noise from all the other rooms, but the silly thing was the desks. They were attached to the wall, and joined with next room’s desk. So when you were shaking your desk, your neighbourg had his shaking the same way. It happened a couple of time that I had to jump from the bed to grap my laptop that was about to fall from the desk due to my neighbourg enjoying some time.

> David : at least he was settle. Imagine how you would feel if he had come to you like “Could you stop having huge sex sessions like this? My wife is jealous!”?

And are you sure it wasn’t a CD from the always regretted band “Pussy” (for those who don’t remember, it was the real band’s name in 1995 http://www.discogs.com/artist/Pussy with their hit “I am sleazy pervert”?